Kohls Company Profile

Kohls Facts

Kohls Corporation is a department store chain based in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin started by Max Kohl in 1962. The stores sell a variety of goods, such as apparel, shoes & accessories for women, children and men, plus home products like small electronics, bedding, luggage, and more. The store aims at a mid-price market.

Kohls features virtually the same merchandise mix as traditional department stores. However, its operations differ considerably from that model. The most noticeable distinction between Kohls and traditional department stores is that all Kohls stores have centralized checkout aisles, unlike the traditional setup of separate checkout counters in each major department. This has led many observers to consider Kohls a hybrid of a department store and a mass merchandiser.

There are about 700 Kohls stores in 38 states in the United States. The chain’s expansion has mainly focused on the middle of the country; however, they recently expanded into the Rochester, New York and Buffalo, New York markets. As of April, 2005, the Company is opening stores in Florida and other Southern states.

The company has had a world wide web presence since 1998, and offered on-line shopping since the year 2000. The company entered the S&P 500 list in 1998, and is also listed in the Fortune 500.

Kohls History

Max Kohl built a grocery store in 1946, the first in what would become an southeastern Wisconsin chain known as Kohls Food Stores.In 1962, he started the first department store, also called Kohls.

In 1972 the British-American Tobacco Company, then known as Brown and Williamson Tobacco, bought the department stores and food stores. The Kohl family, led by Herb and Allen Kohl, stayed on to manage the company. The family left the management in 1979, and Herb Kohl went on to become a senator and owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. This firm expanded Kohls presence from 10 to 39 stores in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.

The grocery stores were sold to A&P in 1983. The last grocery stores closed in 2003.

A group of investors, including the senior management, purchased the company in 1986, and the company added 27 more stores in the next two years. In 1992, the company went public, and a period of expansion began. Kohls entered mid-Atlantic markets in 1997; Texas and Missouri in 1999; New England in 2002; and California and the Southwest in 2003.